For a good while Aest tried to pull the rock toward him, but it didn't budge, not even a little.
Something was off. Not wrong, but different in a way Sonder didn't know yet.
The thoughts and theories made the back of her mind itch.
"Aest," she said, "I want to check something."
He glanced at her, undeterred by his failure to move the rock. "Check what?"
"You, if I had to say," she answered. "Your presence and mana. It may feel strange for a moment, but it's not going to hurt you."
"If you say so," Aest said as he stood before her. "It's not like you go around poking in my head, right?"
"No," she said. "Nothing like that. You may feel a warmth or a shudder come over you."
"Well. I don't think I'm hiding anything anyway. Go on then."
Sonder let her senses widen, unfolding in front of her. She had gotten quite proficient at it.
She could feel the steady presence of the things around her. Herself, the ground, the rocks and air, even the little featherling.
But when she reached where Aest was standing, she felt nothing.
That was strange.
She tried again, slower this time, more careful. She swept her perception over him as one might pass a hand through water.
There was no resistance.
No warmth or weight. No mana or echo of life. It wasn't even an absence because she'd feel if there was something missing.
She sucked in a sharp breath because she'd overextended herself going over Aest's spot with great detail.
"What?" Aest asked when he noticed. "That bad, is it?"
She didn't know how to tell Aest what she felt, or didn't.
"I don't feel you at all."
He didn't seem very surprised. "Even with me standing right in front of you?"
"No. I can see you and hear you, but with sensory magic… It seems like you have no presence at all, like it just skips over you. Even stones have presences. The ground does too. But you just don't."
"Could it be that I just don't have any mana at all? Maybe that's the reason I don't make a good mage?"
"I don't know. I have never seen anything like that before."
The more Sonder learned about Aest's nature, the more it was evident that other than looks, he wasn't like Vell at all.
Vell's presence, when she felt it once in the Great Mines, was enormous. And frightening.
Aest was far less intimidating, just a person, she thought.